Drought Management

We like to say that San Antonio’s commitment and investment in conservation and water innovation has given the city its largest water supply. What does that mean exactly?

Over the past 35 years, SAWS has reduced its GPCD (gallons per capita, per day) by nearly 50 percent (from 225 to 117) by improving infrastructure and cultivating a conservation ethic—all while the population has grown by 150 percent.

With projects like the Aquifer Storage & Recovery, which stores 44 billion gallons of drinking water underground, SAWS is always looking to the future to ensure we’re protected during seasons of drought. Investing, innovation, and conservation help plan for waterful solutions year-round.

Using today’s larger population—at 225 gallons per capita, per day—San Antonio would require an additional 70 billion gallons of water per year. Thankfully, SAWS residential customers have enthusiastically embraced conservation both inside their homes and in how they water their yards.

Here’s how well San Antonio has done

During 2015, 2016 and 2017, homeowners replaced over 2 million square feet of traditional grass with drought-tolerant landscape plants—that’s equivalent to 35 football fields.

By 2070, we expect conservation investments will result in 4 trillion gallons of cumulative water savings since 2017, and would replace the need for an additional water supply project providing more than 45 billion gallons per year.